Inside the Honeywell's control center demo site, Experion Orion Console, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015, in Houston. Visitors can see the future of technologies at refineries, petrochemical plants and large industrial ... more

Photo: Steve Gonzales

Refineries due for an upgrade, with touchscreens and HD monitors among the offerings

A shift has begun in the control rooms of massive refineries and petrochemical plants that’s taking advantage of technology already being used in mobile phones and tablets.

Ultra-high definition monitors, mobile touch screen controls and other tech are helping simplify work being done at major plants while boosting efficiency and safety, executives of a business unit within New Jersey-based engineering and manufacturing conglomerate Honeywell said during a tour one of its Houston facilities.

“The last couple of years our personal lives had better systems than our work lives,” said Vimal Kapur, president and CEO of Honeywell Process Solutions, while showing off the new technologies available at Honeywell’s Customer Experience Center in Houston’s Westchase district. The center has been in Houston for about four years and employs about 1,000 area workers.

Honeywell’s new Experion Orion Console features 55-inch, ultra-high definition monitors and 24-inch touch screens that replace keyboards. There are alarm light bars that switch from blue to yellow to red if there are problems with particular aspects of plant operations.

“If you’ve been to NASA, there’s no difference conceptually,” Kapur said. “The technologies are very similar.”

The problem is convincing companies to make changes when upgrades cost money and give employees unfamiliar equipment. Changing industrial control systems also means operational down time at plants, which can equate to millions of dollars in lost revenues if not properly planned.

“Plant operators are very resistant to change. Change is seen as a negative,” said Jamie Salom, Honeywell systems consultant, arguing that people just need to see the new technology in action and test it themselves. “Within 15 minutes, they’re converts.”

Refineries and petrochemical plants are the biggest growth areas, but Honeywell also is targeting oil and gas rigs, paper plants and other manufacturers.

Still, industrial plants are slow to adopt new technology, which advances at a much faster rate and can create an increasing technology gap, Kapur said.

“Adoption rates are very slow,” Kapur said. “They’re not slow because of intent; they’re slow because of practicality. They simply can’t shut down their plant and they’re worried about the return on investment.”

But that has begun to change as some of the first movers adopt new systems and technologies, he said. In the past 30 days, Honeywell has announced installing Experion systems at refining, petrochemical and liquefied natural gas plants in Russia, Finland, Iraq, New Zealand and Brazil. The ICL Brasil chemical plant will the first Experion system to use the new Orion Console.

“The adoption rate after the initial resistance is very high,” Kapur said. “You may take 18 months to think about it, but after that it shoots up very quickly.”

Companies are touting the technological advances as ways to help bridge the skills and generational gaps occurring in the industry as older workers retire and younger ones are brought in with less training. Getting the Millennial generation to consider entering the process technology industry is a big challenge and technology serves as an important recruiting tool, Kapur said.